Oleoptene

Almost a year ago I wrote this little bit on trying to write when I get interrupted regularly, and I was thinking about that when the unreliable narrator asked me about multi-tasking yesterday. I was chatting with her while buttoning a child's shirt and I don't think she was asking if my kids were coping with getting mere shreds of my attention but, since I was having a good morning I told her...

n one of those "duh" moments I realized this week that everybody has different models for how people work and interact. It may be as simple as categorizing people by their interests, (Totally Breakfast Club, "You see us as you want to see us... in the simplest terms and the most convenient definitions. You see us as a brain, an athlete, a basket case, a princess and a criminal. Correct? That's...

I got a practice mute this week for my violin and viola. Its metal heft perches on the bridge and keeps the voice of my instrument a whisper that only I can hear, so I can practice late at night without disturbing neighbors or children. It surprises me, the need to practice for myself after practicing with all of them. I am practicing with four boys now, most days. With several weeks when both...

Looking for any explanation for having been unable to bring myself to keyboard since I got back from Bahà'à camp a week ago, and they all sound like excuses. Spending a week with a hundred and fifty Bahà'às and having the kids go off all day to their classes and activities so I had lots of time for prayer and reflection was wonderful, but it's not what I write about here, I...

Gentle Reader, Or, no, what I mean is, please be gentle and forebearing, reader. Because in the maw of the absent husband and having watched too many TEDTalks yesterday my brain is near-to-bursting with needing to talk and sort out five or six different ideas that may have nothing at all to do with each other, but lying side by side set each other off so prettily. First I woke this morning to the...

Little girls are cute and small only to adults. To one another they are not cute. They are life-sized. ~Margaret Atwood, Cat's Eye I have a game I play with myself I call perspective: when a problem is bothering me I try to remind myself that five years from now I probably won't even remember the details of it. That's a nice, self-help-y sounding start, right? Only, this week I suddenly...

My baby turned four yesterday, which means he isn't so much baby anymore. Unfortunately, there wasn't a lot of time for planning a huge birthday celebration. A week ago we returned from a nice vacation visiting my parents in New Mexico, and this last week has been a busy one with Raven doing OSCON, leaving the house before the kids were up most days and returning after they were in bed. The older...